Guest blog by Laura Ager
Short Film City is the home of short films at Leeds International Film Festival, for films from less than 1min up to 40 minutes long. These are grouped in categories: UK short film (including a section just for Yorkshire film makers) World shorts, and World animated shorts; a distinct separate competition for each section, where the winners are decided by the Jury who sit in at all of the screenings. As well as an award from the Jury, there are also audience awards during the festival, these things both help film makers get noticed when they send a winning film to other film festivals.
I have been responsible for programming the animated shorts for two years and this year’s programme being the biggest ever and one of my own personal best achievements. Having joined the festival as a volunteer five years ago, I have gradually increased my involvement each year to the point that this year I am looking after all of the volunteers and volunteer co-ordinators at screenings as well as taking care of the animated shorts.
Last year, I was bit overwhelmed by the programming aspect of Short Film City and as things got close to the deadline I found it hard to find the time around my job to really do it justice. We get fewer animated shorts submitted through our normal routes so you have to try harder to find them. I decided that I wasn’t going to let that happen this year, so I made an effort to start earlier, watch more films on Vimeo, request more from film makers and agencies and go to more screenings to see what other programmers were selecting. It has really paid off and I have chosen 30 lovely films at the festival this year, from all over the world, stop frame, computer generated, painted, drawn, mixed media…. All made in the last year too.
The Leeds Film submission process is democratic, so you don’t have to be a well known film maker to get your film seen by one of our programmers. We use Withoutabox to manage the whole process, for which the film maker has to pay a registration fee, but this does mean that the film is guaranteed to be seen, which is not the case if we simply receive an unknown DVD in the office. If you could see the boxes of dvds piled up in our office, you’d understand!
There are some great events to look forward to – the Opening Gala has now completely sold out, our box office sales for the festival have been the best ever this year. The all-night Night of the Dead at Hyde Park Picture House takes place on the first Saturday and is always legendary, followed the next weekend by Day of the Dead at City Varieties with an entirely new selection of films. We have some really special events with film and live music at Holy Trinity church, HiFi club, and in a currently vacant shop space in Granary Wharf.
But if I have to recommend one screening it would be the World animation award programmes taking place at the Town Hall this weekend, at 3.30pm on both Saturday and Sunday, and a special selection of longer animations on Monday 7th at 6pm. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?